The Women’s Pages

by Victoria Purman

  ‘Who said anything about being demoted? You won’t lose any pay, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

  ‘Thanks to my union, women are paid the same as men in this business, as long as they’re on the same grading. Pity that doesn’t apply to every working woman in the world,’ Tilly muttered to herself. ‘Except, you know as well as I do, Mr Sinclair, that all the men at the paper are mysteriously clustered in the senior grades. I wonder how that happens?’

  Mr Sinclair blew out an exasperated sigh. ‘Not that again. The thing is, Tilly, now the war’s over, things around here will go back to the way they were before. They’ve been through a hell of a war, those fellows. And Cleary’s wife’s expecting twins and he could do with a pay rise.’

  Tilly’s heart pounded fast and furious. ‘You’re giving Cleary a pay rise because he’s about to become a father?’

  Mr Sinclair seemed perplexed. ‘Of course. Having a baby comes with all sorts of extra costs,’ he began, and she’d never seen him so flustered. ‘Push chairs and bottles and … you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. I don’t have children myself.’

  ‘Tilly, you know you were only a wartime stop-gap measure. You were never a permanent fixture in general news.’

  ‘Really? Because that’s news to me. Pardon the pun.’ Her jaw ached suddenly.

  His face was a picture of grandfatherly concern. ‘You’ll find plenty to write about on the women’s pages, Tilly. Good stories. Interesting stories.’

  ‘Interesting stories?’ she gasped. ‘If they’re that interesting why are they sent to the back of the paper? When was the last time a woman’s story made the front page?’

  Mr Sinclair was suddenly speechless.

  ‘You’re telling me I won’t be covering anything in general news?’

  ‘That’s what the blokes will be doing.’

  Tilly’s heart thudded. ‘I should have known something was up when Mrs Freeman sent me to cover that fashion story. Dresses for twenty-nine shillings eleven pence and thirty coupons.’

  He reached for the pack of cigarettes next to the pile of newspapers on his desk and lit one. He took a drag and breathed out.

  ‘You’re a reporter, Tilly. Go find some women’s stories. They’ve done it as hard as the blokes during the past six years, all the doing without and whatnot. Happy reunions. Weddings. New babies. How to cook the diggers’ favourite meals on rations. How happy all those munitions girls are now to be at home again. Find out what all the Sydney socialites are up to now the war’s over. Go have lunch with the ladies at the Australia Hotel. That’s what our lady readers want to see. We’ve had the war on the front page for six years. People want hope that it wasn’t all for nothing. That there’s a brighter future around the corner for this country. Write about that.’

  Mr Sinclair flicked his cigarette over the Bakelite ashtray on his desk. It used to be her job to clean it out, twice a day. She would have to wipe his desk down too, the parts that weren’t covered with yesterday’s paper, copy paper, telegrams or snapped and blunt pencils, because the arc of his flicking cigarette was always wider than the ashtray.

  ‘But … but I was a war correspondent.’

  He gently shook his head. ‘The war’s over, Tilly.’

  For a moment, she imagined she was his secretary again.

  Ring Mrs Sinclair. You have lunch with the chairman of the board in fifteen minutes. The father of chapel wants to see you. The premier’s office is on the phone. You need to change your tie. Nothing had changed in all the years since. In his eyes she was clearly still sixteen years old.

  ‘Have you heard any news about your husband?’ Everyone in the newsroom knew each other’s business.

  If reporters liked gossiping about prime ministers and premiers and society ladies and governors-general, they were even more interested in the lives of their colleagues. People’s private lives became fodder for the rumour mill, were discussed at the pub over a beer and at the coffee shop over a toasted sandwich, in the kitchen at the office and at press conferences all over the city. As soon as it had become known that Archie had been taken prisoner, she became the one with the husband who was captured in Rabaul. Cookery editor Vera Maxwell was the one whose husband had been missing, presumed dead. Maggie was the spinster, always said with a nudge and a wink, and Kitty Darling was the one supposedly having an affair with an Important American.

  ‘No news, I’m afraid,’ Tilly replied tightly.

  Mr Sinclair took a deep drag on his cigarette and she noticed his fingers shaking. ‘It’ll come. The top brass are finding diggers all over New Guinea. They’ll find him and all the other Lark Force boys. You can bet on it.’

  She stood on wobbly legs, her voice brittle and breaking. Tilly had had enough. What more did she have to do to prove herself? ‘Have I let you down in some way?’

  ‘Of course not, Tilly. You’ve made a fine newspaperman. You’re one of the best girl reporters we’ve got.’

  While she knew he meant it as the highest compliment a woman in a newsroom could receive, it suddenly infuriated her that it had made no difference at all. And she knew she wasn’t just one of the best girl reporters. She was one of the best writers the paper had.

  ‘Take a turn at making a home for Archie and raising a family. We need to find jobs for the men so they can have the satisfaction again of being the breadwinner in their families. Be realistic, Tilly. You’re not young any more. You’ve missed out on so many years. Your prime ones.’

  Her rage rose in her throat and almost choked her. ‘It’s a waste, you know, sending me there. To the women’s pages.’

  Mr Sinclair stubbed out his cigarette. It stood on its end in the ashtray, bent in the middle. A thin trail of smoke rose from it.

  ‘Tilly … get things ready for Archie. When he comes home, you’ll have a job to do in looking after him. He’ll need you. There’s been so much chaos. Go and settle down. See him back to normal, Tilly. That’s what wives want to do, hey?’

  When had she last felt like Archie’s wife?

  Mr Sinclair stood and rounded his desk. He reached out hesitantly and patted her gently on the arm.

  ‘We’ve all been thinking about you and hoping for good news.’ He spoke softly; his words were kind and that hurt her more than if he’d been gruff and dismissive. She hadn’t admitted to anyone that her hope had been stretched as thin as strands of a spider’s web. How had she survived on daydreams and memories so old they were as faded as the curtains in her kitchen?

  ‘Tilly?’

  Mr Sinclair was blurry for a moment but slowly came into focus. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Go home. Get some sleep. Maybe … get your hair done.’ He cleared his throat and watched her go.

  Tilly made her way through the newsroom. The air rattled with the pounding of typewriter keys and was opaque with clouds of cigarette smoke. She stepped over wads of copy paper, dead paragraphs scattered on the floor like cigarette butts on the footpaths of Sydney. She passed George Cooper’s desk and her eyes were drawn to the space where his Remington portable typewriter normally sat among the detritus. An empty teacup and an overflowing ashtray were still in place. No one had disturbed these artefacts of the war correspondent, as if it would be bad luck to do so. He would clean up his own mess when he came home. She wished he were there so she could talk to him about what had just happened.

  ‘Galloway.’

  Tilly turned at the sound of her name but wasn’t sure where it had emanated from. She glanced around. The room was filled with rows of desks behind which sat young men, ten years younger than her or more in most cases. She’d known every one of the male reporters before the war, knew their habits and their foibles and was familiar with the excuses they made to get a story or for not having got a story. Where were they now? These were boys who had been too young to fight or had had either luck or family connections on their side. The kind of boys who went to school with the sons of the chairman of the board and who had stepped right on into
the reporting roles that women had been shut out of for so long, and were continuing to be excluded from. What made her most angry was that in all likelihood they were already being paid more than she was, these wet-behind-the-ears privileged pups.

  No one seemed to be trying to get her attention, so she resumed walking. Then, a low whistle sounded from another direction and the cacophonous sounds of striking keys ceased like music fading at the end of a phonograph record.

  ‘There goes the commie’s daughter.’ It was a voice she didn’t recognise, one that sounded as if its owner hadn’t quite made it through puberty.

  ‘Or one of the sob sisters.’

  ‘Or both!’

  Once she would have fired back a retort but in that moment she was sideswiped by Mr Sinclair’s news and found herself with nothing to say. This had never been her place, up here on the third floor with the newsmen of the Daily Herald. She was an interloper, like a woman in a shearing shed, the men as much as calling out ‘ducks on the pond’ as a warning to the other serious men doing serious work for tomorrow’s edition. The newsroom was just like every front bar at every pub, just like the Journalists’ Club of Sydney: they were places that barred women.

  She was being relegated to the equivalent of the ladies’ lounge. During the war she’d at least written about women’s labours in the army, navy and airforce auxiliaries; of their service in the Land Army, in munitions factories and in potato chipping plants. They were important stories about women’s contribution to the war. And all the while, the reporters of the women’s pages had filled precious column inches of rationed newsprint with articles on how to use coffee grounds to create the illusion of tanned legs and offering step-by-step instructions on sewing an old army blanket into a children’s dressing-gown.

  Her problem was she’d had a taste of a different life and didn’t want to give it up.

  ‘Look at her. The reporterette. Off you go back downstairs, dear. She should know her place, that one.’

  Tilly kept walking, her heels clicking like a metronome on the linoleum. When the door to the stairwell slammed behind her, she barely heard it. She stopped, took a breath and stared at her shoes. They weren’t what they seemed, either. It was only polish that had held them together these past four years and it was only hope that had kept her going. But now, every piece of her life was speeding towards a conclusion she didn’t want to face. She was alone. She’d lost the job she truly loved. Her father was sick and getting sicker and Archie was still gone.

  Suddenly, every limb felt leaden and she gasped as a choking sob escaped her throat. Her knees buckled and she grabbed for the handrail, lowering herself backwards onto a step. She pulled her knees up and dropped her head into her folded elbows, a hard pillow on the tweed fabric of her skirt.

  The war was over. She’d read it in her own newspaper.

  So why did it feel as if hers would never end?

  Chapter Sixteen

  War correspondent George Cooper stood at Tilly’s door wearing a brand-new suit, a charming smile and a tropical tan. She was so happy to see him she almost wept.

  ‘Mrs Galloway.’ He bowed dramatically before presenting her with a bottle of Gordon’s gin. ‘A gift for you from Singapore.’

  ‘You’re too generous. Thank you.’ She took the bottle from his hands and absent-mindedly read the label, glad she was holding on to something to quell the irresistible urge to throw herself into his arms for a hug and a sob. The return of any man—soldier or war correspondent—was a reason to celebrate. ‘Welcome home.’

  ‘Why, thank you.’

  ‘Sinclair told me you’d be back this week. Are you home to dry out?’

  ‘A cruel retort. I don’t know what you’ve heard but I deny everything.’

  ‘How was your flight?’

  He frowned. ‘Bumpy.’

  Tilly hesitated for a moment about inviting him in. Mary and Bert were eating dinner in the kitchen and the last thing she wanted to do was interrupt what seemed like a lively conversation between the two of them. There hadn’t been too many of them since Bert had returned. He was making the transition back to normal life, to the wife he’d been apart from for so long, to routines that might have become unfamiliar, and it was taking some time. He was getting used to being home and being a husband once more.

  Cooper peered over her shoulder into the empty living room. The wireless was playing quietly in the corner. She’d been on the settee reading a magazine when he’d knocked and now here he was, completely unexpected, clearly in the mood for company.

  His blue eyes sparkled. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in? That gin won’t drink itself, you know.’

  Tilly lowered her voice and moved in to whisper up at him. ‘I normally would but—’

  ‘Tilly?’ Mary appeared in the doorway with oven mitts on both hands. ‘I’m just taking the canary pudding out of the oven. I was wondering if you’d like a bowl. Oh.’ She waved her gloved hands in the air. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting.’

  Tilly stepped back, opened the door wide and motioned for Cooper to come in. ‘Mary, you remember George Cooper from the Herald. George, Mary Smith.’

  Mary tugged off the mitts and crossed the room. ‘Yes, of course. So nice to see you again, Mr Cooper.’

  Cooper and Mary shook hands firmly. ‘You work in classified ads, if I remember rightly.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  George nodded respectfully. ‘Your section pays for war correspondents like me to travel the globe. On behalf of us all, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And my liver.’

  Just then, Bert appeared by Mary’s side. ‘Mary?’

  She slipped an arm through his. ‘Bert. This is Mr George Cooper, the war correspondent. Mr Cooper, this is my husband, Bert. He’s just come home from Singapore.’

  If anyone else had noticed Bert’s twitch, no one reacted. Bert disentangled himself from Mary and shook hands perfunctorily with Cooper.

  ‘How do you do.’

  ‘George Cooper. Good to meet you, Bert.’

  Tilly sensed the tension radiating from Bert’s stiff shoulders and quickly filled the sudden uncomfortable lull in the conversation. ‘George has just been up in Singapore. Not fighting, obviously. He’s a reporter for the paper.’

  ‘Where did you serve, Bert?’ Cooper enquired.

  ‘Changi.’ Bert jammed his fists into the pockets of his trousers and blew out a noisy breath. ‘Not that you’d call that fighting.’

  Mary and Tilly exchanged a quick glance.

  ‘But he’s back now. That’s all that matters,’ Mary trilled, her neck flushing. ‘Come on, Bert. I don’t want that pudding burning.’

  Tilly made sure they were out of earshot before she turned to Cooper and said quietly, ‘Probably not a good time for that drink.’

  Cooper studied her face. ‘Not here, anyway.’ He cocked his head at the door. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘The Roosevelt?’

  ‘That’s what the name on the door says. I figured, let’s make it easy. Let’s walk out of your apartment building, turn left and then left again and voila, here we are.’

  Since it had opened in 1943, Tilly had had to steel herself to the noise and commotion that drifted up to the flat: slamming taxi doors, raucous laughter, American accents imploring some local girl or other to come inside for a drink and a dance, milling crowds and the occasional thuds of a fistfight—but she hadn’t ever been inside the nightclub. For a place with such a reputation, it was unprepossessing from the outside. On the front of the building there was a single door and two curved and darkened windows. Its name was etched in frosted glass and passers-by might miss it entirely if they weren’t looking for it, which made it all the more glamorous in Tilly’s eyes.

  As they waited for the doorman to usher them in, George quipped, ‘I suppose you’re here all the time.’ His eyebrows raised in a question.

  ‘Me?’ She shook her head adamantly.

  George laughed. ‘You’re pulling
my leg. You practically live next door.’ He pointed to her apartment building, which loomed tall in the dark, as if she might have forgotten where she’d lived for the past four years.

  ‘Why should that be a surprise to you? No one’s ever asked me,’ she replied a little defiantly. ‘Until you.’

  Cooper seemed genuinely taken aback. ‘And you let that stop you? Why didn’t you and Mary burst through these doors every night and get sloshed? God, I would have. Every damn night.’

  Why hadn’t they? It was a good question and the answer was a simple one. Tilly had danced once with a man who wasn’t her husband and she hadn’t been able to let go of the guilt since Darwin. She and Cooper had never discussed what had happened that night. That he’d wanted to kiss her and she’d realised it; that she’d turned away just as their lips would have met. That he’d held her while she struggled with missing her husband, her loneliness and her confused desire. It had been easier to pretend it had never happened so they could remain friends, because she needed him as a friend more than anything.

  She searched for an answer and found one to make him laugh. ‘Because Mary and I work for a living, Cooper. We’re expected to turn up every day and do our job, better than the men do and then some.’ She didn’t want to think about her conversation with Mr Sinclair that day. She still hadn’t completely figured out what it all meant for her.

  ‘Touché,’ he said and saluted her with a laugh.

  Tilly couldn’t deny the small thrill of pleasure it gave her to make him laugh. She had missed the company of a good man. She had missed him. And while there was nothing she enjoyed more than the camaraderie of her colleagues in the women’s newsroom, and in particular Mary’s company and friendship, being with Cooper was different. They were reporters and there were conversations she could only have with him.

  No one in the crowd around them, milling and jostling and hustling for entry to the mysterious club behind the narrow doorway, knew that she was a married woman, that Cooper was only a colleague and a friend. Here they could be anonymous, even in a city where most everyone read their words in the newspaper every day. She could pretend to be someone else, someone who wasn’t the wife of a prisoner of war. She could act however she pleased without worrying about the judgement and assessment of others about what the right amount of grieving looked like.